Sunday, December 23. 2012

In 1783 George Washington returned home to Mount Vernon after the disbanding of his army following the Revolutionary War. In 1788 Maryland voted to cede a 100-square-mile area for the seat of the national government; about two-thirds of the area became the District of Columbia. In 1823 the poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas, by Clement C. Moore (a.k.a. 'Twas the night before Christmas) was published. In 1888 following a quarrel with Paul Gauguin, Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh cut off part of his own earlobe. In 1913 the Federal Reserve Bill was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, establishing the 12 Federal Reserve Banks. In 1922 the British Broadcasting Corporation began daily news broadcasts. In 1928 the National Broadcasting Company set up a permanent, coast-to-coast network. In 1941 American forces on Wake Island surrendered to the Japanese. In 1947 John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William Shockley invented the transistor. In 1948 former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese war leaders were executed in Tokyo; they had been found guilty of crimes against humanity. In 1951 the NFL Championship Game was first televised nationally by the DuMont Television Network, as the Los Angeles Rams beat the Cleveland Browns 24-17. In 1953 Soviet secret police chief Lavrenti Beria and six of his associates were shot for treason following a secret trial. In 1968 eighty-two crewmembers of the US intelligence ship Pueblo were released by North Korea, 11 months after they had been captured. In 1986 the experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first non-stop, around-the-world flight without refueling as it landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California. In 1989 ousted Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were captured as they were attempting to flee their country. In 1990 elections in Yugoslavia ended, leaving four of its six republics with non-Communist governments. In 1997 Terry Nichols was convicted by a Denver jury on charges of conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter in the 1995 federal building bombing in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people.